Friday, March 13, 2015

Glass City Wine Festival Makes Triumphant Return

The Glass City Wine Festival held its third annual event last weekend. If our intuition is correct, it will be around for many, many years to come.
Last year the festival made a major stride forward, upgrading the food and the décor. Improvements continued this year with a larger space and a live jazz band. Of course the main attraction was Ohio wineries, and 20 of them were on hand.
Green Dragon and I were joined by tasting team members Cabinator and Glorious T. We were lucky enough to get VIP tickets which allowed us to enter an hour earlier than regular tickets. We’re glad we had them and I’d recommend them highly for you next year.
The wines veer toward the sweet side of the spectrum. There were strawberry, blackberry, dandelion and pomegranate joining the more traditional ranks of Merlot, Riesling, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir and Cabernet Franc.
One of our favorite booths was Chateau Tebeau. We sampled and enjoyed their Cab Franc and their Pinot Gris. This year I was focused mainly on the whites and was able to enjoy Mon Ami’s Gerwurztraminer and Hillside Winery’s Traminette.
A couple other notable stops were Klingshirn (loved their Chambourcin) and It’s Your Winery, which offered a nice Pinot Noir.
A nice addition this year was a presentation by Pairings: Ohio’s Wine & Culinary Experience. Pairings is a showcase for Ohio wines and wine education and is located in Geneva. We sat in on a short sensory wine tasting which was different and enjoyable.
We went light on the food, since we were going to dinner at Registry Bistro afterward, but munched on some very good lobster mac and cheese from Rosie’s and taste-tested the cheese from Yancey’s Fancy. This artisan cheese from New York was delicious, especially the Champagne Cheddar and Smoked Gouda.
Thanks to the Glass City Wine Festival, the month of March is now a lot brighter in Toledo!

2 comments:

Aimee said...

Did you go to the one in 2014 or 2015? If this post is about the current year, you must have had VIP tickets or been treated as one so you'd write up a good review. There was barely any food there and the lines for wine were so incredibly long in three hours time, we hadn't even made it halfway through! And that was just lines for wine, we had no time for vendors who weren't giving out samples, or should I say swallows of wine. Terrible, terrible event! Now 2014, that was something to rave about!

Dave Nershi, CSW said...

Aimee - Yes, we did go in with the VIP tickets and so didn't encounter long lines. As we were leaving, we saw that lines were starting to get longer. That was a problem the first year.Sorry it was a bad experience for you. No one should have to wait in long lines.